I saw Lucinda Lau posting really cute old school cakes on Facebook and got excited. These were cakes we ate so often when we were kids.
In the 1960s and 1970s, there were hardly any other cakes sold in the neighbourhood bakeries other than these. Growing up, I often wonder why people eat such things, they are slimy, full of that so thick cream… And one of the reasons why I started baking so young. I wanted a variety of cakes, and to be able to have cakes that my father would make instead. His were a lot nicer than these.
But now that they have completely (almost!) vanished from our stores, I am starting to want to have a bite once in a while for old time’s sake. As I made these, I realised how well the swiss meringue buttercream holds up. This is a predecessor to the buttercream or whipped cream that we are familiar today. It is much more stable, and really delicious. Er… don’t eat too much though, it has loads of saturated fats in it.
Nothing in this meringue is uncooked, so it is safe and it is really easy to make. There is a lot of room for error compared to most other kinds of filings.
Have fun making these. You will notice that mine are not cut nicely, as I baked this in my old house, and I didn’t have all the right equipment, including a long, long knife. I used a really short one, and therefore the cream smudged everywhere. So don’t repeat my mistake, use a long knife.
I used my trusty old swiss cake recipe and bake two of them. Easy, fast and no need to slice in half to sandwich the cakes! 🙂
Old School Sponge Cakes
Ingredients
- 1 Standard Swiss Roll Recipe
- 1 Chocolate Swiss Roll same recipe as the standard swiss roll, replacing 20g of flour with cocoa powder
- 1 Swiss Meringue Buttercream Recipe
- 1 Piping Gel Recipe
Instructions
- Bake the swiss rolls and let cool.
- Make the swiss meringue, which must be used at room temperature.
- Colour the piping gel.
- Sandwich the swiss rolls with some swiss meringue buttercream, and then decorate the top as desired.
